Peter the Hermit and the Donkey

In 1095, a barefoot French priest convinced somewhere between twenty and forty thousand people to walk to Jerusalem and take it back from the Seljuk Turks. He did this months before the actual armies were ready. He had no military training, no weapons to speak of, and no plan beyond the conviction that God was handling logistics.

He rode a donkey.

His followers loved the donkey. They plucked hairs from it and kept them as holy relics. Peter also carried physical letters he claimed had fallen from the sky, written by God himself, which is the sort of credential that is difficult to verify but equally difficult to argue with. He never ate bread, surviving on wine and fish, which at a minimum simplified catering. One does not assemble forty thousand peasants on personal magnetism alone, but Peter appears to have come close.

The march went about as well as an unprovisioned, untrained civilian army walking two thousand miles into enemy territory might. A dispute over the price of a pair of shoes at the Hungarian border killed four thousand people and burned Belgrade to the ground. At Civetot, the Seljuks annihilated nearly everyone. Peter was in Constantinople at the time, seeking supplies.

He survived. He joined the real crusade. He deserted during a famine, was caught, wept, and was pardoned. Then the crusaders chose him as their official diplomat to the enemy commander.

He walked into the camp and offered a duel.